Sorry I didn't have time to update last week. I was busy with marching band.

Also, DR characters compared to Blair's height. [166 cm/5'5"] ^^

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My restless, dreamless sleep was interrupted by a bright light shining down on me. I groaned, slowly opening my eyes.

The light blinded my vision for a bit, before I put a shaking hand over the source and slowly sat up. But it hurt. I looked down at myself, realizing I was covered in bandages. But there was no blood on the bed I was laying in, so at least I wasn't bleeding. At least not anymore.

I removed my focus from my broken form, taking in my surroundings. The walls of the room I was in were bright red, going oddly nicely with the bright blue tiles that made up the floor. Questionable choice of colors but I was too tired to think about that. The room was a pretty decent size, and mostly empty, aside from the bed, a small table in the corner, and a few cabinets and shelves. And, of course, the person sitting in a chair next to me.

Without tearing her worried gaze away from me, Chihiro turned off the bright light of the lamp.

Chihiro… she's the computer girl, isn't she? Was she the one who bandaged me up like this?

The girl clasped her hands together. "Blair! You're awake! Thank goodness! Are you alright? Do you feel okay?"

I spoke slowly. "Chihiro? Wha- what happened?"

"You attacked Monokuma, and he exploded. Luckily your-"

At the word 'exploded,' I bolted up, not caring about the throbbing pain in my head. "Wait. He exploded!? That means this is all over, right!? We can go home!" I smiled, happiness filling my heart.

But that feeling shrunk when Chihiro averted her gaze. "Um.. not exactly. Apparently Monokuma has extra copies of himself..."

I frowned, looking down at my bandaged arms. So I hurt myself like this for nothing.

"B-but look on the bright side! The explosion was small, so your injuries weren't that bad. You do have a few burns, but no broken bones."

I unveiled the sheets that covered the lower half of my body. My arms and legs did have some burns, and I could feel some on my stomach, plus bruises on my back. But right now, that pain meant nothing compared to the embarrassment and regret I was feeling.

Chihiro seemed to sense this. "Is something wrong?"

"It's nothing… just… I… rushed into a situation I knew nothing about and put myself at risk for nothing. I should have thought things over more. I'm an idiot." I said, wallowing in guilt. It was true. I shouldn't have rushed in and assumed things. I was just so scared and angry. I should have at least collected more information. But I didn't. I just attacked Monokuma. And look where that got me, sitting on a bed all bandaged up having to have other people take care of me.

"No-no!" Chihiro replied, waving her hands in front of her face. Her short brown hair bounced as she shook her head. "Thanks to you, we know that Monokuma has copies of himself. That's useful information! Plus, you were the only one who was ready to take action. Everyone else was still in shock. That has to count for something!"

I didn't reply, just stared into the space ahead of me. Instead, I asked, "Why'd you help me?"

The shorter girl looked a bit taken aback by the question. There was a slight blankness in her expression, as if she thought the answer was obvious. "Because I was worried about you." A smile plastered on her face.

My gaze softened, and I smiled back. I'm not sure what it was, but something about her reminded me of Shi-Shu. Maybe it was because of their same sensitive nature, or maybe just their similarity in height, but I couldn't help but compare the two of them.

"What are the others doing?" I suddenly asked.

"Well… after you passed out, Sakura carried you to your dorm room, and I bandaged you up. Then Monokuma finished with his entrance ceremony and left. After that, we all decided to split up and search around. We all agreed to meet in the dining room." She put a finger on her chin, looking up at a clock hung up on one of the walls of the room. "It should be about time to meet up right now."

I sighed, combing a hand through my orange locks. "Searching for a way out. Another thing I couldn't help with…"

"Don't beat yourself up." Chihiro told me in that soft voice of hers. "...If you want, you and I can look around together after we meet up with everyone."

"Yeah. That sounds nice," I replied.

Looks like I already made a friend here, I thought, a warm feeling replacing the guilt that threatened to consume me.

**~**~**

Chihiro helped me stand up, and I was able to walk to the dining room with only a bit of help from her.

The dining room was pretty big, with one long table in the center of the room and smaller tables surrounding it. The room had the same red flooring as the dorm rooms, but checkered with a darker red. There was also a huge window making up one of the walls, giving us a view of the outside world.

I hope the last view I have of outside this building isn't from these windows. I shuttered at the thought.

In the room were Mokoto, Sayaka, and Taka, all chatting merrily beside the big table. Chihiro and I joined them.

"Oh hi Chihiro! Blair!" Sayaka greeted us with a small smile.

"Yes. Hello. Glad you're feeling better, Blair." I could tell Taka tried not to look at the bandages all over my body.

"Thanks," I replied halfheartedly, sitting down at the long table next to Chihiro. "Where's everyone else?"

"They should be here shortly. I'm sure they're searching throughly and looking forward to meeting up."

Well, one of those things is certainly true, I thought, but didn't say anything out loud.

**~**~**

Eventually, all sixteen of us were crowded around in the dining room, ready to discuss.

"Okay! It looks like everyone's here. Time to start the meeting!" Taka announced. "Let's all go around and share what we found during our respective investigations."

"Wait! Hold on a second." Junko interrupted. "That one chick's not here. Y'know, the silver haired girl. What's her name? Oh yeah, Kyoko!"

I was suddenly fully alert when I heard Kyoko's name. I quickly stood up, scanned the room, and found that Junko was right. Kyoko wasn't here.

"What?" Taka yelled. The look on his face signified that he was either scared for Kyoko's well-being or he was absolutely horrified at the idea that anyone would even think of skipping the meeting. Probably the latter.

I ignored him, immersing myself back in my thouhts. Kyoko did seem like the type of person who would play to the beat of her own drum, but for her to not show up at all…

My mind wandered to something Monokuma  said before I was knocked unconscious, the main reason he gathered us all.

"You must kill someone if you want to leave."

I felt the color drain from my face.

Could Kyoko really be…

I began having a full blown panic attack as Sayaka and Makoto flirted with each other.

I shook it off. Why am I so worked up? I don't even know Kyoko that well, and she's probably fine. Besides, we're not actually going to kill each other… right?

I decided to distract myself from my swirling thoughts by listening to everyone's testimonies and discoveries.

The first piece of actually useful information was from Junko, surprisingly. She found out that all the rooms are completely soundproof, which was a bit scary. Junko also talked about the locks on the girl's bathrooms.

Sakura told us about a set of stairs leading up to the second floor. But they were covered by gates, so only the first floor is accessible to us.

Toko and Junko got into an argument, where Junko unveiled a more serious layer to her personality. Huh. Maybe I misjudged her from our first interaction.

Anyway, Sayaka told us the most important information. That the kitchen was entirely stocked with food, and it got refilled everyday. I could just feel my mouth watering when she said that. My family had never been the most stable financially. So sometimes we had to cut meals because we couldn't afford it. We managed to afford enough, but we definitely never had our kitchen filled to the brim with fresh food.

I wonder if this place has cinnamon rolls…

That was when I heard a familiar voice cut through the air.

"You're all spending a lot of time yelling and carrying on. Do you really think you can afford to do so? Have none of you accepted the reality of the situation?"

I felt relief wash over me. Kyoko!

I was going to ask her where she'd been, but Taka beat me to it.

"Kyoko! Where the heck have you been? We already started this meeting without you!"

She didn't reply.

Oh geez, I thought. Kyoko was missing and could have been injured… or worse! And here I was thinking about cinnamon rolls...

But my thoughts were interrupted when Kyoko reached over me and slid a paper on the table. It looked like… wait, was it really?

"It appears to be a map of Hope's Peak Academy." I probably imagined the slight sarcasm in the white-haired girl's voice.

The map confirmed that this was Hope's Peak, not just some place we had been taken to for the killing game. Or that's what Kyoko gathered at least. And I trusted her judgement.

"So… there's only one logical explanation," I suddenly butt in. Some of the others looked over at me in surprise, as if they had forgotten I was there and were startled by my sudden involvement in the conversation.

"Someone's taken over Hope's Peak Academy. And forced us into this for their own benef-"

I cut myself off as I heard a chuckle from the person at a smaller table next to the bigger one the rest of us (excluding Toko) were sitting at.

I turned around in my seat and glared at Byakuya. "Does something seem funny to you?"

Byakuya didn't even meet my gaze when he responded, as if he thought I was so below his level that I wasn't even worth meeting eye to eye. "Of course that's not what happened. Do you know how massive and rich a school Hope's Peak is? They have security everywhere, for heaven's sake! You think it would even be possible for one person to completely take it over? And even if there were a person rich and intelligent enough to do that, what about the police? Surely they would have caught sight of what's going on and apprehended the intruder."

"That's why they took our phones! And maybe it isn't just one person. Maybe it's a group of people. Really rich, powerful people." I hadn't felt myself since I woke up after the explosion, but now I was getting some of my fire back.

Byakuya opened his mouth to reply, but Aoi interrupted him. "It doesn't matter who's doing it. All that matters is that we get out of here!"

"Yeah. And let's stop talking about all that… negative stuff." Yasahiro chimed in. "We just have to calm down and everything'll work out just fine."

I wiped around to look at him. My eyelid twitches at his laid back attitude.

I heard a small laugh from someone on the other side of the table. I wiped my head around again to find Celeste smiling in amusement.

"W-what are you laughing about?" Toko challenged.

"Heh. It's just funny. None of you want to accept the truth," she said in her silky Russian accent. "It's perfectly obvious that we have been imprisoned in some secret location with no way out."

When she says it like that… I squirmed in my seat a bit.

Silence rang in my ears before it was finally broken by Toko's desperate cry. "You didn't h-have to go a s-say it. I was trying not to th-think about it." She clutched her head, her glasses shifting a bit out of place as she scratched her head nervously. I couldn't help but feel a bit bad for her. She seemed a lot more anxious than most of us.

There were a few comments from some of the more quiet people in our group about how there must be something we can do, but Celeste's reply was short and simple.

"All we can do is adapt," she said. "Adapt to living our lives here from now on. A lack of adaptability is a lack of survivability. After all, survival is not based on who is the strongest or who is the smartest." Her eyes drifted to me. "It comes down to who can adapt."

I met her gaze steadily.

"That is why," Celeste ripped her gaze from mine. "I have a proposal. We all understand that we are trapped here, which means we will be spending the night. However… you all remember the rule regarding nighttime right?"

"Rule?" I questioned. So Monokuma went over rules after I passed out?

"Oh, that's right." Chihiro piped up. "I forgot to give you your handbook." The small girl pulled a small blue tablet out of her pocket. My eyes widened.

Wow, her pockets are really big. And I didn't even notice they were there. And they're skirt pockets, too!

As I marveled at Chihiro's skirt pockets, she handed me the tablet. I held it in my hands. It was surprisingly light, and looked like very new technology. I turned it on, and the Hope's Peak emblem shone on the screen. At the top right hand corner were the words 'Hope's Peak Academy E-Handbook.'

Chihiro swiped her finger across the screen twice, to reveal a 2 in the middle of the screen with words under it.

I read it out loud. "Nighttime is from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Some areas are off-limits at night, so please exercise caution. Sleeping anywhere other than the dormitory will be seen as sleeping in class and punished accordingly."

"Considering this, I think we should add a rule of our own," Celeste told us. "Going out at all at night time should be prohibited altogether." The doll-like smile on her face made me feel a bit uneasy, though I couldn't describe why. "The school regulations do not actually tell us not to go out at night. I would like to make it official."

"But why?" Toko asked.

"Because, the way things are now, we will start to get worried and anxious whenever night falls."

"So you're suggesting that we limit our activity at night as a kind of preventative measure," Sakura confirmed.

Celeste nodded. "But unlike the other rules, only peer pressure will enforce it."

A few nods of agreement and confirmations spread across the room. Looks like everyone agreed with Celeste's idea. But the question was… would everyone follow it?

"Anyway," Celeste continued in her elegant voice. "I'll be going back to my dorm room now. I want to take a shower before night arrives." And with that, she walked away with a satisfied smile, a slight bounce in her step.

"Adaptibilty…" I heard Sakura mumble, probably thinking about what Celeste had said.

To be honest, her words got me thinking too. It was obvious now that all this was not a joke. If we were going to get through this, we had to adapt to this new lifestyle, not panic and put ourselves at more risk.

I heard a shaky breath from beside me, and looked over at Chihiro, who had tears brimming in her eyes. My face fell. That would be harder for some of us than others.

"Okay then… let's call an end to today's meeting!" Taka announced. Some people were already heading back to their dorm rooms. "Like she said, it's almost night time. We can reconvene first thing in the morning!"

"Do we really have to stay the night here?" I was surprised that Chihiro spoke. She had been so quiet this whole time. But now I could see why. Her voice was tense, and I could tell she was trying to keep her tears from escaping.

I rested a hand on her shoulder. "Come on! Don't be like that. What's the use in crying?"

"W-we all might die. If that happens, I'll never get to see my family again! I-I'll never…" the waterfall of tears that the girl tried to hold back suddenly exploded, causing a look of despair to resonate in her face.

"Hey, remember what Celeste said? We have to adapt!" I tried to make my voice sound comforting, bit it came out a bit harsh. Aoi was better at this stuff than I was. I looked over at the swimmer, who just gave me an encouraging thumbs up.

I bent down to look Chihiro in the eyes. "Hey… remember what you said about searching together? Why don't we go do that?" I gave her a reassuring smile.

The shorter girl looked up at me, rubbing away the tears that streaked her face. "Really?"

"Yep!" I patted her on the head, making her laugh a little bit. "Don't worry, your safe with me. I'll protect you!"

Even though I meant it, I still couldn't stop three certain  words from resonating in my mind.

If I can...

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Wow, this is definitely the longest chapter so far. We're coming down to almost 3,000 word territory over here!